Day: September 13, 2021

There is a new Guinness World Record for the longest distance traveled by an electric truck on a single charge. Swiss-based firm Futuricum built a Volvo-based delivery truck that drove for 683 miles on a closed test track.

Although the prototype used to set the record has reportedly been in regular service on Swiss roads since early 2021, the record was set on a 1.7-mile high-speed oval operated by Continental near Hanover, Germany. The truck set off with a full charge and coasted to a stop 392 laps later; two drivers split their schedule in 4.5-hour shifts. Reaching the 683-mile threshold took about 23 hours, so the truck traveled at an average speed of 31 mph.

Futuricum calls this a realistic average value for the truck’s intended use — it’s certainly not designed for long hauls. Whether it was empty or loaded with cargo wasn’t specified, and we’ve reached out to the company for more details. What we do know is that the drivetrain was not modified, meaning the 680-horsepower truck is equipped with a 680-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack. That’s over six times bigger than the battery in a Porsche Taycan.

Driving at a constant speed on a closed track is very different than delivering parcels in real-world conditions, which is what the Futuricum truck normally spends its days doing. In more normal use cases, the model (whose speed is electronically limited to about 55 mph) has a driving range of around 250 miles, according to the manufacturer.

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Porsche and its international partners have started building the factory that will produce a new synthetic fuel starting in 2022. Located in southern Chile, the plant will make fuel for race cars, sports cars like the 911, and classic cars.

Producing synthetic fuel is an extremely complex and highly innovative process. In the company’s words, electrolysers split water into oxygen and hydrogen using wind power, hence why the plant is in Chile; it’s located in one of the most reliably windy parts of the world. CO2 is then filtered from the air and combined with the hydrogen to produce synthetic methanol, which in turn is converted into fuel that can be burned in a piston engine.

Porsche sees synthetic fuel as a non-electrified alternative to gasoline in markets where so-called Green Deal regulations are trying to make the internal combustion engine illegal in the coming years. “Our icon, the 911, is particularly suited to the use of eFuels. But so are our much-loved historic vehicles,” said Porsche’s R&D boss Michael Steiner. He added that approximately 70% of the cars Porsche has made are still on the road.

In theory, running a car on Porsche’s synthetic fuel won’t require mechanical modifications. “Our fuel specifications meet exactly the existing ones, so you could burn such fuel in a 993 without damaging the engine, and without making mechanical adjustments,” Steiner told Hagerty. There’s a catch: it won’t be cheap. When it arrives in Europe, where it will be distributed by ExxonMobil, it could cost about €2 per liter depending on taxes. That’s about $9 per gallon at the current conversion rate, which is more than even most Norwegians pay for gas in 2021.

Porsche will begin making synthetic fuel in 2022; it notably plans to fill up the cars that race in its Mobil 1 Supercup series with it. The plant will produce about 34,000 gallons of the fuel in 2022. If everything goes according to plan, its annual output will increase to about 14.5 million gallons by 2024 and around 145 million gallons by 2026.